Saturday, October 30, 2010

Wikipedia - What you know and don't know about it

Let's all be honest here.  You use Wikipedia all the time.  Why wouldn't you? It's fast and easy and you are happy with the results.  But, your instructors tell you not to use it and not to cite it in your research (unless you are writing a paper about Wikipedia).

So, what are you going to do?  First, understand that you can get a nice overview of a topic by reading an article.  You can also look at the links at the bottom of the page such as, references, external sources, further readings, primary sources, scholarly studies, etc.  Take some time to look at these.  Look for sites with .gov, .edu, .org extensions.  Visit those sites and read and learn more on the topic.

Once you have a better understanding of your topic, then visit the library page and use the databases to locate scholarly or peer reviewed articles.  On the library webpage you'll also find links for ebooks.  Take a minute and locate one you can use.  Now you have several sources and you can begin working on your paper.

Want to read what Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia says about using it in your research?  Read more here.

Here's one quote by Jimmy Wales from the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

“For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia."

1 comment:

Gregory Kohs said...

You might want to fact-check your claim about "the founder of Wikipedia". That's actually a lie. Don't perpetuate lies.